Joanna Massie of The RSA recently created a location ‘heat map’, helping visualise the locations of Fellows in the East of England. Some interesting patterns, some densely populated areas and a few empty landscapes emerged.
(Joanna is our Regional Manager in the East of England, and we offer our thanks for her permission to publish the images here on conversationsEAST).
The visual display shows some interesting, even expected distributions. The Norwich Fellows Group gives the region a bold standing in central Norfolk.
There is a strong A12 ‘corridor’ of Fellows from North East London up to, and including Ipswich. Cambridge offers the region a high density of Fellows in residence, as to be expected.
Hertfordshire and the North West corner of London offer up a surprising density of Fellows too. With, we suspect, the ‘London effect’ coming into play.
Despite the region’s strong showing in Norwich, the west of the county, and the centre, offer a paucity of Fellows. Likewise, the North Norfolk coast has little ‘heat’ on the map.
When thinking about the blank spots, is it that potential Fellowship members exist in these cooler areas? Are they prime areas for some gentle Fellowship activity to stir up interest in membership of the Society?
Joanna used, we believe, discrete and secure postcode analysis to generate the map. It would be interesting to do the exercise again and overlay the original source data with specialisation of interest, for example. Where do the philosophers live, where are the concentrations of technologists and coders, and whither the historians, for example?
Creating heat maps from data?
There are a variety of free on-line tools to help you create ‘heat’ for your project or membership database. Try, for example…
OpenHeatMap – see http://www.openheatmap.com/ Not the most sophisticated web site, but useful as a tool and advice source.
Target Map – see http://www.targetmap.com/ A more complex set of tools, from the free to subscription model.
The RSA have just published a report, Breaking The Mould, which examines the contribution to the SME sector that on-line market places, like Etsy, make to this economic sector.
If you haven’t already…discover Etsy on-line here – shop from independent crafts people from around the world.
The report, authored by the RSA’s Benedict Dellot, emerges from the support that Etsy gave to the recent project The Power of Small. The report defines and conditions the role of e-commerce for the small, entrepreneurial business and assesses how changes in support and on-line infrastructure could further advance the sector.
The UK’s micro-business community is expanding rapidly. Since the turn of the century there has been a 40 percent increase in the number of firms with fewer than 10 employees, and a growth of over 600,000 since the economic downturn began in 2008.
Yet one of the most interesting trends lies behind the headline figures namely the growth in part-time self-employment. The number of people working for themselves for less than 30 hours a week has grown by almost 65 percent since 2000…
The report offers insights, garnered from research respondents, into the sectoral structure of the on-line craft entrepreneur. The data reveals a strong commitment by women business creators to on-line trading and a remarkably large percentage of respondents who had not sought capital investment for their business.
These findings, to us at conversationsEAST, are a clear indication of a strong, yet perhaps under-recognised, female driven entrepreneurial sector and a perhaps less than clamouring call for finance, which government and mainstream lenders would currently have us believe.
The vast majority (91 percent) of sellers are female. 20 percent of sellers report their Etsy business to be full-time, compared with 65 percent who are part-time. 22 percent are employed in a full-time job on top of their Etsy business and 15 percent are in a part-time job. 15 percent are at home looking after dependents, whilst 40 percent of sellers required no funding to get their business started…
The report, Breaking The Mould, also offers the reader some innovative recommendations as to how this sector focus, of on-line craft entrepreneurs, can be supported. (The report, in general terms of marketing, finance and enterprise, is a model of energetic advance for the SME sector as a whole, we would argue…Ed).
The new pathways to enterprise support include…
Recognise ventures in official measurements
This is a vital turn for ONS and government departments who monitor and support trade and industry. Often the core resources to a web business, hosting, network infrastructure, even for the small trader, can lie outside the UK. But the revenue generated and associated supplies and ancillary equipment sales occur always where the entrepreneur is based…and the additional new jobs too.
Make business support part of the BBC’s public purpose
A great idea. Making the national broadcaster, any broadcaster, sensitive to and supportive of small business is a powerful tool in raising the bar for young people and those who are gender discriminated against. (The emergence of the social sector entrepreneur fits the bill here too. using technology to promote goods and services on-line, where social outcome, ethics and green credentials are just as important as profit, all would fit well with a ‘public purpose’ remit too…Ed.)
Promote the importance of having a personal `brand’ from an early age
Managing your on-line presence early is a great way to master new skills, coding, presentation, clarity of thought and is, if done in a structured way, empowering and self resolving for the ambitious entrepreneur. The on-line business is not a ‘second choice’, any more than the on-line personality is any less powerful now, with the ubiquity of computing and mobile devices.
Tweak search engine algorithms to highlight smaller businesses
Simple. Make the G###le’s of this world prime referees for the SME in any location. The big corporations already have teams of marketers using traditional and non-traditional marketing methods to make their brands permeate the commerce-sphere. Give the little guy and girl a break too!
Deepen our knowledge of the therapeutic effects of selling
Have you pitched for anything? Have you structured an offer, simple or complex, and won the day. You enter the room as a philosophical five foot tall person, you leave it six feet four! Never under-estimate the power of small, incremental successes in early stage entrepreneurship. We agree. (This is as much about promoting confidence and personal skills as it is in fostering or extending the consumer society. We all ‘sell’ everyday, one way or another, if we are successful…Ed).
This is an intelligent, thoughtful analysis of an entrepreneurial sector undergoing growth and change. Read and help break the mould.
We are living longer, even despite social and economic disparities in society. We are retiring later and some individuals are not seeking to retire at all. A trend to longer, healthier lives means that there is more experience and energy that older people can offer than ever before. (You can see an Office of National Statistics report on retirement age from 2012 here…Ed.)
As a society do we value the mature contributor? Do we capitalise on the learning and earning capacity of this age cohort? Jonathan Collie thinks not. He is looking to raise enough funds to hold a conference on ‘The Age of No Retirement‘ on the 1st to the 6th October, 2014.
‘…‘The Age of No Retirement?’ is Britain’s first ever national conference to debate & revalue our opportunities in retirement. Gathering experts, policy makers, key stakeholders and the public we will explore retirement and the opportunities we can provide in an ageing, technological and engaged society’.
It is planned that the first two days of the proposed conference will look at, debate and construct visual outputs and nascent policy proposals around some key themes…
Work & employment
Ageism & prejudice
Health & well-being
Technology & communication
The plus-50 consumer
Self, family & society
Knowledge & education
After a closed day of consolidation and publication there will be a public, three day open event for the review of, and a wider consultative approach to, the work and its outcomes.
The Collie manifesto on ageing has it’s own practical outcome too. Jonathan founded, and has gained wide support for, a new social business called Trading Times.
The project connects local employers with mature workers who are often retired, single parents or carers. They may not need a full-time job, but can offer a wide range of skills to interested employers.
We think this is an important debate. Not only because the conversationsEAST office is a ‘no-retirement’ zone, but because the potential contribution of this section of society is untapped. Trading Times is not the only player in town, but could provide an economic model that works well for the mature employed.
Why not a Trading Times hub in every RSA region? (It’s not immediately obvious from the web site, but we suspect that TT is a London centric initiative at present…Ed.)
In conclusion, the Age of No Retirement constitutes a move to an important new social shift. Support it, whatever your age, as the outcomes may condition the whole life contribution you can make. Wherever you are on your journey now.
Today sees the launch of a new RSA report, generously sponsored and in collaboration with British Land – Socially productive places – Learning from what works: lessons from British Land – born out of an earlier RSA conference.
Social productivity is the additional social value that can be created through better relationships between citizens, society, business and public services…
The report is a long letter to developers, communities and planners, essentially pleading the case that ‘…long term property value is driven by the long term economic relevance of an asset’.
A socially productive place would build community capacity to benefit from and drive growth, and increase resilience to shocks and give an ability to adapt to new circumstances. This is not a new idea. The evidence in the report tracks community development progressive initiatives from early EU regional funding to the New Deal for Communities.
What is new, perhaps, is the tight focus on new skill acquisition by all partners and a fresh focus on method and delivery for impact. The same refocus is taking place in the community finance sector, where the ‘impact investor’ and how outcomes are mapped and delivered is a priority for funders, project planners and community partnerships. The report exercises this viewpoint well.
(As an example of this new social finance mode of delivery see how Social Enterprise East Midlands worked in collaboration with Big Society Capital to deliver an informative and effective mapping session for politicians, social bankers and financial intermediaries in this new sector. See more here…Ed.).
The RSA Report also shows how private capital is developing both it’s land bank and its ideas with impact in mind. The report references brands such as Asda ‘... adopting a ‘community venturing’ approach, forming partnerships with charities and public services‘.
Discover more about shopping for shared value and community venturing in a recent edition of Matthew Taylor’s blog – read more here.
Planning should be thought of as a front-line service.
The success of a development should be judged by its impact on those who use it and its ability to contribute to a broader set of social and economic outcomes, the report declares. Building high quality public realm is expensive, but, says the report, privatising public space is not the answer.
Accessible public realm is an important feature of social productivity places – places designed to support social and economic connectivity. When built, the people must come.
To achieve the above, then there are a number of often new issues to wrangle with for key players in the development process. Investing in community relationships, by any mature, established corporate entitity requires agility and commitment. The report focuses on three key elements…
Successful community investment takes time and effort by developers, including long term consistent representation, engagement by senior executives and dedicated staff.
Local political support is essential, site specific planning frameworks are not.
The results for developers can be profitable as quality of public realm drives rents, and local consent for density allows greater floorspace yield from a site.
The Cambridge sub-region:
One of our own sub-regional cities features in the report too. Cambridge, which quietly broke out of green-belt constraints in the 1990’s, created new communities and growth areas. These well designed and built communites, although having offered an increase in take up of local services were less successful, the report indicates, in increasing employment in those new communities. They have, however, increased pressure on transport links.
As universities become ever increasing drivers of economic development, then local areas should increasingly consider graduate retention as an important part of their
social and economic development thinking, the report highlights. Working with both universities and developers to pursue this goal should be a strategic priority for the future. Certainly a key development driver for Cambridge, being the world class research nexus that it is.
Finally, the report gives readers examples of non-linear, non -traditional development models which utilise public spaces for community benefit in innovative ways.
One such featured is Incredible Edible – whose growth has been achieved by by-passing bureaucratic processes, ‘…which rely on a narrow account of how value is created and maintained’.
In summary, this is an important paper, which whilst containing no ravishing new insights or philosophy, should score very, very highly with the community development sector in the way that it brings together, in a new meld, a variety of distinct skill sets to map a new way forward for developers, planners, politicians and community groups.
You can still find the content of the original conference, and the papers presented by a list of distinguished speakers here, on The RSA web site.
Heading away from the Eastern Region over the summer period? Spending some time on the South Coast? A great event with some inspiring and refreshing RSA talks will be taking place at Camp Bestival 2014.
‘The sister festival of the Isle of Wight’s Bestival, in its first year Camp Bestival was awarded ‘Best New Festival’ at the UK Festival Awards and has since won Best Family Festival three times at the awards in 2009, 2010 & 2013.
With a host of thrilling activities from soft play and circus skills to go-carts and glitter, there’s plenty of excitement for kids of all ages. Plus, there are kids’ shows and performances on the Castle Stage and in the Big Top, daring antics to be had at the Freesports Park, and fairytale escapism in the Dingly Dell’.
The RSA Team will be boarding their summer holiday charabanc and leaving the metropolis for the Dorset countryside. With tents, wellies and a relaxed mind, ready to be entertained themselves and to have the children beguiled too.
Fellows, and the assembled audience, will be able to enjoy The RSA Hour events on Saturday and Sunday of the weekend…
Saturday 2 August at 10am. Psychologist Dr Ben Ambridge’s innovative interactive investigation of intelligence.
‘What is intelligence? Where does it come from, and why does it even matter? How much do you know and understand about what makes you tick? And how good are you at predicting other people’s behavior…or even your own?
What’s the link between intelligence and curly fries? Are atheists cleverer than religious people? What about men vs women, or right- vs left handers? Does listening to heavy metal or Mozart make you smarter? What do different shapes taste like? Are you stupider than a monkey?’
Sunday 3 August at 1pm. Dr. Kevin Fong – our fascination with the final frontier.
‘Of the men who once walked on the Moon, only a handful now remain. The space shuttle, the most remarkable space craft ever built, is gone. Our ambitions appear to be failing almost as fast as the Government funds available for space exploration.
Variously described as ‘TV’s face of science’ and the ‘Brian Cox of medicine’, self-confessed space junkie Dr. Kevin Fong asks – have we come to the end of our fascination with the frontier of space? What social and scientific value did our curiosity about space really add, back here on Earth? Perhaps in the future we will look back upon the endeavour of human space flight as we do the building of the pyramids…’
Image: Albert Robida, 1882 – The Public Domain Review, 2014
A wonderful vision of city and cultural life, imagined in 1882. Even in the 21st century it is hard to contemplate leaving a cultural event in a city, stepping into your floating air carriage and drifting off home in ease and solitude.
Even after the most vigorous Tannhauser at the Royal Opera House, a trip on the Northern Line to return to the solace of High Barnet bears no comparison.
We have not given up on the city yet, though.
Our recent Fellows Annual dinner in the East of England was held in the surroundings of Emmanuel College in Cambridge. Dating from 1584, the original Dominican Priory has been embraced by later buildings, yet Fellows were able to hear an entertaining and informative after dinner talk by Matt Lane, Head of the Royal Opera House site at Thurrock, the Bob and Tamar Manoukian Production Workshop, where ROH productions are built and delivered to cities.
The conversation also ranged across the occasion of the region’s forthcoming conference at the University of East Anglia. The programme for which includes Norwich Fellows session on Empowering Invisible Norwich and another on What is a Learning City? So although we will not arrive by hover car, the idea of the city will continue to echo.
Extending the city:
Writing just before the start of this century Peter Hall, in his book Cities in Civilisation – Culture, Innovation and Urban Order ( Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1998) was minded that…
At the turning point between the twentieth century and the twenty-first, a new kind of economy is coming into being, and a new kind of society, and a new kind of city: some would say no city at all, the end of the city as we know it, but they will doubtless prove wrong…
Hall goes on to develop his argument about societal change and stresses the enormous impact of technology on urban dwellers across the globe. This is true, but the forecasts of the end of the city have proved somewhat premature.
In fact, the building, or extending of cities, continues to be a hot political issue. For the forthcoming report by Sir Michael Lyons there is an indication that he will recommend that cities should be allowed to expand at their edges, a return to the New Town concept perhaps. With councils free to borrow and invest in house building and bringing reform of land release for house building to the table.
This latter point outlines how strong the the High Victorian concept of urban spread as an entirely bad thing remains. Surely the point is what sort of urban extension or city growth you achieve. We must not build urban ‘rookeries‘, or blanket ‘Bedford Brick‘ box extensions across acres of green fields either, we would argue.
Land release for social housing or city corporation development will be a thorny issue for private landowners, what ever the political persuasion of the originating idea, we suspect. You can see this debate outlined in more detail in a recent article from Patrick Wintour in The Guardian here.
Farming the city:
Using existing infrastructure in conurbations for innovative purposes is immensely appealing. Using it to farm, to develop new urban and social businesses based on food, new flowers and green space cultivation is a great way to deliver new skills, better diets and employment into communities, we would argue at conversationsEAST.
Robida in 1882, or Hall in 1998, could not have imagined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MITCityFARM project.
“As part of the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, we explore the technological, environmental, social and economic design of scalable systems capable of producing affordable and high quality food in the heart of our future cities”.
If you have an interest in this green aspect of the debate an on-line visit to MIT is worth it. The MITCityFARM team are working in three key areas.
Re-thinking the ‘grow it there, eat it here’ agenda
reviewing the ‘urban infrastructure facade’
developing global open access course-ware, to make knowledge about agriculture available to all.
In the East of England, the agricultural heartland of the UK, arguably, there must be Fellow’s projects that can be blended into delivery of vertical gardens, rooftop farms or the reclaiming of industrial and derelict sites for community owned small holdings or gardens? (Write to the Editor, let us know, we’ll do a feature…Ed.)
The edge of the city, in the city garden:
A blending of city growth concepts and urban farming/community greening agendas come together in the now, with the recent release of the short list for the Wolfson Economic Prize.
The Wolfson Prize team undertook research to see what sort of urban development was uppermost in people’s minds. The Garden City was by far the most popular ‘civic choice’ of growth mechanism. Simon Wolfson talks about the design choice in this short film below…
In conclusion, maybe the time is now right. We have innovative thinking on edge development, an energised architectural sector with modern materials and community sensibility, coinciding with increased interest in city farms and Garden Cities from the civitas.
The RSA Action and Research Centre have just published Salvation in a start-up? The origins and nature of the self-employment boom (Benedict Dellot, May 2014).
A collaboration between The RSA and Etsy, an on-line creative and craft market place, founded in New York in 2005, the report is part of a forthcoming series which…
examines what types of micro-businesses are becoming more commonplace? What has caused the large increase in recent years? And what effect are they having on the economy and wider society?
New markets, new people?
The report argues that the current economic landscape contains six tribes of self employment. The Visionaries, the Classicals, the Independents, the Locals, the Survivors and the Dabblers.
We at conversationsEASTwould have liked to see a seventh category, or is it an overlay to do with motive for the existing players? That of the ‘socially motivated’ self employed. Whether a visionary at the top of the list or a part-time, older dabbler at the bottom, all may have begun their entrepreneurial journey with a passion to undertake an ethical, socially focused business or activity.
(There must be Fellows in the East of England who fit into this latter, socially motivated cohort, given the ‘societal change’ remit of our Society? – Ed.)
The largest of the cohort surveyed were the Survivors. Earning less, and more likely to be younger. Whilst the argument for overwhelming market competition that forces this group to struggle to survive may be a good one, if viewed through a more ethical, social business lens, the lack of focus on personal income but rather on softer, less tangible social outcomes for an entrepreneur like this would also affect the findings too.
Another interesting focus in the report is the Happiness Paradox. The traditional view of self employment, it can be argued, is of an isolated, stressed individual who struggles to make ends meet. This rather cliched description is belied by other findings that suggest those who seek self employment are ‘…more content at work and happier in their lives’.
Stress there is, without doubt, but the RSA report highlights other academic research that sees the development of self employed enterprise as ‘…long periods of relative stability punctuated by critical episodes of transition and change’. The gains for the individual in life outcome are only punctuated by pains periodically. The management of change, or how to pivot the enterprise, is a key skill for the entrepreneurial micro-business, social or otherwise.
Do these finding matter? Yes they do. The RSA research findings offer a subtle and detailed analysis of self employment, its conditioning, content and motive. It disposes of the traditionally held viewpoint that older people, who are pushed or pulled into self employment, represent the core. When in fact, by age, motive and shades of effectiveness the position is more complex.
Does this affect our region? Yes it does. This focus on self employment, who by and how it is operated should condition the thinking of Fellows who are looking at projects involving education, social entrepreneurship, skills and sectoral growth in any field. Self employment is a conditional state. Entrepreneurship is about opportunity recognition and the philosophy of risk. The two are connected.
The ‘social business’, delivered by one or a group of entrepreneurs, wholly focused on social outcome is, we would argue at conversationsEAST, a sound model for sustainability of a project. What a great solution to economic change and development in communities – social entrepreneurs delivering innovative ethical business models over time.
Arguably, if the new report Salvation in a Start-up has rewritten the self employment landscape, combining it with social enterprise can re-write a community landscape? What do you think?
As a new organisation 80,000 is clearly flexing and changing as the efficacy of their campaigns, support for students and discovery of a sustainable social business model begin to emerge.
As a group of people they are dedicated to the take up of social impact as a career choice by graduates. They have fostered a wide debate about earning to give, and now, from the evidence of their strategy thinking, are looking for a way to build upon their research expertise and web publishing capabilities.
We read the strategy document with interest here at conversationsEAST. What has been produced, it seems to us, is a general template for any organisation which wishes to pursue societal change.
What emerges is a strong focus on original research, coupled to applying the emergent information, data and reflection to web outputs in order to disseminate ideas and raise recruitment.
Whilst expressed briefly here, the concepts do not seem sparklingly original. However, as to be expected from the creative cohort at 80,000, they are not often expressed so elegantly or in such a clear and structured way.
Designed by Foster + Partners, this iconic building rests in the University of East Anglia campus landscape and is perhaps the pre-eminent collection of modern art in our region. The permanent collection housed at the Centre was relaunched with a complete re-display in September of 2013.
At the same time the Centre’s largest exhibition to date was opened – Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia. The exhibition was assembled from some 250 works, donated by over 60 institutions. The ranged from neolithic flint hand axes, tomb effigies from East Anglian churches to paintings from the Norwich School artist John Cotman.
The space, with its endless variety of ways to approach the works, still attracts a sense of wonder and deep engagement. The short video below, featuring the Centre Director and art historian Philip Mould, conveys this sense of connection well.
If you have never visited the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, you should. Not least to see how the curatorial energy of the Centre team has won them a deserved place in this competition.
A new indicator of human well-being and potential delivered, the Social Progress Index for 2014, uses non-economic data to map the nations of the world and to determine their relative rank in achieving social progress. Discover it on-line here.
A recent article and the latest RSA Short focus on the issues of economic growth and how there are omissions in the singular pursuit of economic growth, as a proxy for the development of the human condition.
It is an interesting idea that there should be a non-economic proxy for human well-being, regularly and cogently calculated, which serves as a measurer of human development. The pursuit of which leavens the aggressive one-sidedness of capital by pivoting economic activity into a pursuit for human happiness.
Could the Social Progress Index be the proxy long awaited?
Poorer countries are often compared using to the UN’s Human Development Index, though this tends to be highly-correlated with GDP, with all the limitations that implies. One of the strengths of the SPI is that, by only using social and environmental indicators and excluding all economic measures, it is easier to compare how countries with similar GDP are doing relative to each other.
Matthew Bishop – The Economist
In this 2014 analysis the United Kingdom ranks 13th in the world in terms of the values subscribed to by the index. The top three world nations are New Zealand, Switzerland and Iceland.
The data clusters used for the index are divided across three main headings – basic human needs, the foundations of well-being and opportunity. The U.K. does well in global terms with regard to water and waste infrastructure for example, as to be expected, and has a good score on the opportunities available for individuals to change their lives. We do poorly on rankings around equality and inclusion.
This short video compares and contrasts Gross Domestic Product outcomes with the SPI…
The new index is fostered by the Social Progress Imperative. A movement that subscribes to the goal of developing and guiding access to social investment ‘…which creates a shared language and common goals to align different organizations and achieve greater social impact’. Find the Imperative on-line here.
You can view, print or download a larger image of the map here…(jpeg file)
